Seymour began to photograph the shapes and patterns, forms and contours that he saw while walking around his farm and the surrounding countryside. Aspects of Nature that had been closed to him became captivating; the weather, the seasons, water moving over stone, vegetation growing and dying. He was energised, obsessed, driven to explore a subject he would previously have dismissed as dull and pursued a perspective at which he would have sneered; abstract natural photography. The country was the only place to live, he told London people who sometimes called asking why he’d disappeared; it was rich and exciting. No commission could tempt him back to the metropolis. Time was short. Why would he waste it?
Domestically life changed, too. Seymour cooked while Julian chopped, Seymour washed the clothes, Julian hung them out to dry, Seymour shopped, and Julian made lists. When his father explored the countryside taking photographs, Julian pottered around the farm gardening or fixing machinery. And when Julian was crushed by bleakness or splintered with anxiety, Seymour was there through the bitter days and bleak weeks.
Music was their constant companion. To provide comfort, energy, consolation, distraction or entertainment, Seymour orchestrated playlists. He drew on the vast collection of vinyl already at the farm but added to it, too. Modern and classical music that he heard on the radio or read about in the reviews and had sent by post. Occasionally he took his son to see live music in a pub and several times to local church where the choir was particularly good. If Mrs Morle found it maddening to work in the music-filled household, she accepted it was the way the Stratton men now lived.
He barely acknowledged the diagnosis. It confirmed what he had suspected for some time: an uninvited presence resided in his body. He took the drugs, tolerated the treatments and acknowledged with equanimity that they offered care rather than cure. There was much he needed to do and fighting the inevitable was not part of his plan. ‘Thank you, doctor,’ he said and, despite the pain, Seymour left the specialist’s office with a spring in his step. He made an appointment with his lawyer, the son of his old friend Naresh, the shop keeper. Sunil Rao would impose legal certainty in a world of chaos.
‘How did you manage it, Mrs Morle?’ he asked her one afternoon. Julian was in hospital again. He had become so unwell that despite Seymour’s best attempts at musical and culinary therapy, his son had been admitted under section. The doctors raised the possibility of electro-convulsive therapy, a subject that made Seymour furious and devastated in equal measure.
Mrs Morle stopped buttoning her coat.
‘Do what?’ she said. Had Mr Stratton had been drinking? He looked terrible. Crumpled in a chair by an unlit fire, his head was sunk into his shoulders like an old turtle.
‘Raise such a balanced child,’ he replied. Exhaustion dragged on the skin beneath his eyes. She saw that he was suffering. ‘I tear myself apart sometimes, asking myself if it is me who is to blame for Julian’s troubles.’
‘There’s all sorts that goes to making someone troubled,’ Mrs Morle replied, starting her slow roll towards the door. Then she turned around to face him. Taking a deep breath, she said: ‘I ask meself the same question, you know.’
‘You? But why, Mrs Morle? Lynn has done so well. You told me that she has a job, a boyfriend…’
‘Ah. That’s all nonsense and lies. I haven’t told you the truth, Mr Stratton. Didn’t want to bother you, not when you had your own troubles. Don’t go torturing yourself, Mr Stratton. At least your boy is around. I’m on my own. All alone.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Lynn – well – the only thing I knows about my girl is this; she’s gone, and I don’t know where she is.’
‘But I thought she was…
‘I wait each day for a letter from her and I pray each day it will come, don’t I? But it don’t come. And I don’t know where my lovely daughter is living or how she is doing at all.’
The nausea that plagued him over the past few months made Seymour belch. ‘I do beg your pardon. Is all this true? Why did Lynn go? Where is she?’
Mrs Morle did not answer. Shuffling herself around, she headed for the door.
31
‘Up you go, Chloe.’
‘What time’s he coming, Mum? Do I have to be there, too? It’s so embarrassing, some weird guy from the pub.’
Chloe trails upstairs from the kitchen to Maggie’s room where her revision books wait.
‘Darling, I told you, Aubrey is coming for supper at 7.00 pm. It’ll be nice to get to know a local person. I’m popping into the town now and when I get back, I’ll bring you a cup of tea and you can have a break. See you later.’
Amy had brought Chloe to the cottage so she could revise for her ‘A’ levels during reading week and escape the distractions of friends popping in unannounced. Conversations about exam panic, exam stress, lack of sleep. Girls could describe in forensic detail the colour and complexity of their revision schedules. But as for actually sitting down to study.…
Amy parks the car in the market square. The butcher who said he knew the life and times of every animal jointed in his shop window sells her lamb chops, and she buys two bottles of Beaujolais in the wine shop: she’ll take one home for Simon. She posts an article she’d finished the previous day at the post office and while there, asks for directions to the care home.
‘She’s in her room, prefers it to the day room,’ says the nurse. ‘Watches the birds out the window. Sometimes she knows where she is, other days she talks a bit of nonsense. She doesn’t get many visitors.’
Her name is on the door: Mrs Lily
